Rebecca,
Lily needs stability.
Please stop confusing her.
That was it.
No love.
No explanation.
I wrote anyway.
Birthdays.
Christmas.
First day of school.
Anything I could imagine.
I never knew which letters reached her.
Maybe none.
Maybe all.
Prison teaches you how to live without answers.
So on release day, the first thing I did was take a bus toward Cedar Valley.
That was where I had grown up.
That was where my mother lived.
At least that was what I believed.
I imagined knocking on the old front door.
I imagined my mother opening it.
I imagined her being angry.
Cold.
Maybe ashamed.
But somewhere underneath all of those possibilities, I still imagined being allowed inside.
I imagined sleeping in my old room.
Just one night.
I imagined finding Lily.
I knew she might hate me.
I knew she might not want to see me.
But I needed to try.
